REVIEW: Ben & Jerry’s Salted Caramel Core Ice Cream

I had the most emotional experience a few years ago when my parents took me up to the northeast to drop me off at college. It was heart wrenching. Painful. Soul crushing. Never have so many tears been shed.

We took a tour of the Ben and Jerry’s Flavor Graveyard.

Here, I witnessed all the good things in life I would never be able to know. Dozens of incredible ice creams who all died too young. Rainforest Crunch? Goodbye Yellow Brickle Road? Why did we turn our backs on remarkable ingredients like cashew-brazil nut buttercrunch and peanut butter cookie dough? So Pistachio Pistachio could keep its spot in the freezers? I couldn’t handle it. The world wasn’t the same without these. The inimitable lost ice creams needed to be revived.

The new line of “core” flavors is actually a resurrection of sorts. The concept first appeared back in 2002, and Karamel Sutra has been on shelves since. However, I can’t say this was the resurrection I was hoping for. For the most part, all of the new flavors are just recycling components already found in other pints. There’s very little ingredient innovation going on here. These pints are basically the same as when Taco Bell announces some new rehashing of tortilla, ground beef, and cheese.

That being said, there’s nothing that prevents a rehashing from tasting good. Their Salted Caramel Core flavor, a sweet cream ice cream base with blonde brownies and a salted caramel core, seemed to me to be one of the best combinations they could make with their current arsenal. That is, unless they develop an ice cream with a cookie dough core. Flavor gurus, take note.

I was most excited about writing this review for the sole purpose of doing this:

This cross-section is a work of art. I believe in the industry this is what they refer to as “core-core porn.” Regardless of the practicality of the core, I will admit that this is beautiful. So if you’re the kind of person who regularly likes to take out your aggression on a pint with a 10 inch blade, this might be the flavor for you.

The biggest issue at hand here is core mixing: how to get that center pocket distributed into every bite. I feared that I would run into the same issue that I do with cupcakes, where you get a few really great bites of heavy frosting and then are left with a lot of dry mediocre cake.

By the time I started eating, the ice cream and caramel were soft enough that I could mix them together on my spoon fairly easily and avoided that problem. However, I’m usually an impatient ice cream consumer who ends up chiseling at a frozen pint, and I can’t see this set up working for me on a normal basis. I also don’t see how this would work well in their fudge core flavors, because while cold caramel still has a certain malleability, cold fudge seems impossible to distribute.

The best thing this pint has going for it is that it’s safe from the chunk diggers in your household. The blondie pieces are prevalent, but much smaller than those in Rockin’ Blondies, so they’re impossible to extract on their own. And while it’s technically possible to hollow out the pint and eat nothing but caramel, I can’t see that being a pleasant experience unless you like to lick salt rocks to pass the time. I thought the salted caramel paired well with the sweet cream base, but it’s not a component that can stand alone.

All in all, is this ice cream good? Yes, very. Does it deserve the hype it’s been getting? Probably not. The core does nothing that a great swirl couldn’t, and there’s nothing special about a salted caramel flavor anymore. If Ben and Jerry’s wants to rehash old components, at least bring back the stuff you can’t get from anyone else. Give me cashew-brazil nut buttercrunch, then we’ll talk.

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7 thoughts to “REVIEW: Ben & Jerry’s Salted Caramel Core Ice Cream”

Regarding the cupcake problem … the answer is to rip off the bottom. You then have two options: turn it into a sandwich with the frosting all in between the layers, or, dip each chunk of the bottom you rip off into the frosting, bite by bite, and then eat the top half with the remaining frosting!

I didn’t care for this flavor. I think maybe all of that caramel is too intense for me.Eating it all together strangely makes the blondie pieces taste like a sweet breakfast cereal. I wish they eould bring back rainforest crunch. I ate rainforest crunch when I was young and remember it fondly.

I wanted to like this flavor, but geez, the caramel was waaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyy too salty! By itself, the caramel core has too much salt to be edible on its own — and that’s a huge problem. Each component should be delicious on its own. They could easily have cut the salt in half to make non-salt-addicts like me happy and still have more than enough salt to keep the salted caramel designation intact.

Thank you! I just bought this flavor and couldn’t wait to get it home!! The caramel even when eaten with the ice cream was so salty I couldn’t eat it. Never ever have thrown away a cone but I just did. EW it is awful.